


women's liberation is a lesbian plot

by campholmes



Series: women's liberation is a lesbian plot [2]
Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: 70s AU, F/F, Pregnancy, its back! thanks for your patience, san fran lesbians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 17:14:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11741574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/campholmes/pseuds/campholmes
Summary: “What’s up with you and Barbie? She looks like you just promised her the sun, moon, stars, and fresh produce for life.” Katya eyes Trixie, already working on corrections with her red pen at her desk. She’s biting her bottom lip like she does.“Don’t worry about it, maybe I did.” Ginger lights her pipe and puffs on it a few times as she scans Katya’s face.“Don’t get into anything you can’t get out of,” Ginger mumbles. Katya rolls her eyes.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hi! didn't know when i would post this but i'm currently feeling this story Hard and i thought "Why not?" They've grown, i've grown, and i'm excited to share this <3
> 
> special thanks to UNHhhh for listening to me cry about this for like, decades and yelling at me when i said "wow rose soap is... good?" 
> 
> and thanks to anyone that considers this fic to be their favorite. this is for all of you! part two coming... Eventually. Set in 1979! [title taken from this photo](https://queerty-prodweb.s3.amazonaws.com/wp/docs/2013/06/index.php_.jpeg?pg=1027799201)

“Let’s have a baby.”

“Mhmm,” Katya hums. She’s sitting on the fifth floor window seat, hair twisted into a bun. It’s somehow grown past her ass, and most nights Trixie stands on their bed behind her as she kneels and brushes through it slowly. She’s drinking her morning coffee and looking down to the cracked pavement below. Trixie creaked in on bare feet a few minutes ago, her white t-shirt long enough to reach her knees. 

She had sat on the wood chair next to the green table, drinking her coffee and reading the newspaper, but she’d moved over to Katya’s side a few seconds ago and her fingers are in Katya’s frizzy pile of hair. And then she’s gone, pulling her fingers away, padding over so she isn’t facing Katya’s back.

“Wait, what?” Katya does a double take, wipes the sleep out of her eyes with one the hand not occupied by her mug. She swings her bare feet to the floor to face Trixie.

She’s standing with her fingers curled together in front of her stomach, her toes are turned inwards and she’s half looking at the ground, half at Katya. Katya can hear Naomi yelling downstairs.

“I want to have a baby with you,” Trixie looks up defiantly, like she’s preparing for battle and rejection, she shifts her feet parallel and drops her hands clenched to her sides. Her nose is scrunched up and her eyes are flashing bright blue. Katya kinda wants to eat her out but now is clearly not the time.

“A baby.”

Trixie huffs and sits her butt down on the chair again, picks up the paper and starts to pretend to read it. Katya stands and walks over, takes the seat across from her and pulls the paper from her limp hands gently. She folds it and sets it down, takes both of Trixie’s hands in her own.

“Just talk to me, please? I don’t even know what you mean. Is there a girl you know that needs help?” Trixie doesn’t do as much direct community outreach as Katya, doesn’t go door-to-door since she’s always swamped with the newsletter. So Katya is curious where Trixie got the idea to adopt, or if she’s met a girl that’s asked her to take her baby.

“No…” Katya can feel her brows furrow. Trixie is looking into Katya’s eyes again, like she should understand, but she doesn’t, and it’s driving her nuts not being able to read Trixie’s flushed face.

“Dolly,” Katya squeezes her hands a little tighter, tries to telepathically send to her that she doesn’t get it.

“Like,” Trixie pulls her right hand back and runs it through her heavy curls. “I want to have my own baby. Your baby. Our baby,” Katya gets a laugh shocked out of her, a big belly laugh, and Trixie rolls her eyes. “No, dumbass, I know you don’t have a dick. Like, I’d be Mommy and you’d be Mama but there’d be a Dad somewhere that doesn’t have to matter.” 

Katya’s eyes widen, and Trixie just sits, stares at her. Waiting. Katya takes a long sip of coffee, watching Trixie over the top of the mug. She’s still staring, her eyes are piercing holes into Katya’s skull.

Katya sets the mug down.

“Why,” she has to ask. Is she supposed to just fucking sit there and give a yes or no based on the information she has? She doesn’t know anything, not Trixie’s motivation or reasoning. Trixie would be a wonderful mother, yeah, but she’s a lesbian. Always has been. And Katya too. Raising a baby isn’t anything Katya’s ever considered, because she’s always known that she’d never be a housewife. She’d just assumed that Trixie felt the same way, somewhere in the back of her mind, but now she guesses that she was wrong.

It’s making her anxious, but she swallows it down and breathes in deep, reminds herself that she’s known Trixie for seven years. She wouldn’t hide something like this from Katya for that long, wouldn’t hesitate to bring it up unless she was okay with how their futures were destined to play out. 

Trixie sighs long and heavy, takes a sip of her coffee and links their fingers again. It’s raining a little bit against the window and the ladies are still yelling downstairs about something that Katya will have fixed in five minutes by the time she’s made it down the stairs.

“I want you to keep an open mind for a second,” Katya’s heart is beating a lot faster, now. Is she already pregnant? She wouldn’t do it without asking Katya, and Katya _knows_ that, objectively, but now she can’t stop the irrational panic from rising into her chest.

She lets herself blink once, and when her eyes open again she can see how nervous Trixie is in her pale cheeks and white fingers around Katya’s. She screams at herself to shut up in her head once, and then she’s back in the moment, with the goal of comforting Trixie in the front of her mind.

“Okay, my mind is wide open, baby. Lay it on me.” Katya grins, and she can feel her shoulders relax, her stomach unclench when Trixie giggles at her. 

“Okay. I’ve always. I’ve always wanted a baby, Katya. I really have, and I know that I’d be good at it. But, I’ve never like, thought that I’d have one. Obviously,” Katya nods. Trixie is waving her hands around as she speaks in tight circles. She’s still holding Katya’s hands in her own, yanking them around. It doesn’t even look like she knows she’s doing it.

“And, but, okay. I’ve been thinking. And I talked to Pearl about this, and she helped me make a list of pro’s and con’s, and. Katya? Can you imagine how wonderful it would be, raising a baby completely removed from the influence of a man?”

Katya’s convinced. Well, her instant jump is to be convinced by that one line. She’s going to keep calm, though, to let Trixie explain further. She isn’t letting anything show on her face. Her heart is beating so fast.

“I mean. It would be so wonderful, I think. I think that our baby would have the most beautiful childhood. Our baby would be so loved, Katya, I just want to put that love into the world, and what better place to do that than here?” Trixie lets go of her hands finally, throws her arms out to gesture to their apartment.

Katya gets the whole fifth floor, well, in theory, because sometimes it _does_ get overcrowded and someone will have to stay in their living room. But she’s the director, Ms. Woman In Charge, as Trixie says, so they live on site, so she can monitor the grounds and whatever bullshit she spews to Trixie when Trixie wants to fuck after dinner when the building is quiet for once.

Their home is so nice, the tree reaches the window and gives them dappled sun, the rooms are spacious and separated by an entire floor from the chaos of the floors below, and it’s a little messy and disorganized, books stacked on every available surface (including toilet, refrigerator, and television), but it’s homey, cozy, and Trixie’s knitted a massive pink blanket for their bed that lies on top of the duvet.

It _is_ a nice home for a baby. They even have a spare room, and Katya’s heart clenches at the image she conjures up of Trixie nesting, decorating the space into a nursery, hanging little paper stars in the window.

Trixie is silently watching Katya now. She’s said her piece.

“Baby, where’re we getting your fertilizer?” Trixie’s eyes widen and her jaw drops, then her lips pull into a wide smile. She laughs delightedly, jumps from her chair to where Katya’s sitting, throwing her arms around Katya’s neck.

“Really?” Trixie’s voice is muffled by her hair that’s fallen out of the twisted bun, her glasses are digging into her cheekbone and nose.

“Well, if you can find a dick, sure,” Katya laughs, squeezing her around her middle. She’s making a huge decision, and she’s making it quickly. But Trixie’s thought about it endlessly, Katya can see it in her eyes and can hear it in her prepared words. Trixie’s never prepared words for her before, and that’s enough for Katya to drop everything and follow her blindly into the future.

She’d do anything for her, would sign her life away the moment Trixie asked, and when she thinks about it for a few more seconds she realizes that, in a way, she just did. And she can feel it curling warm in her stomach, how Trixie takes the reins and leads them both, how Katya can stand behind her and back her up.

Trixie sinks down to her knees, then, pushes Katya’s own faded t-shirt up above her bellybutton and pulls her panties down, stuffs her nose into Katya’s blonde curls and runs her tongue over Katya’s clit, pulling a moan from her lips.

Katya shifts her butt so that Trixie (who is humming into her, making her whole body vibrate) can access everything a little easier, and reaches to the center of the table for a joint and her lighter.

\- - -

Trixie is still getting dressed in their bedroom when Katya bounds downstairs, unlit cigarette hanging between her lips. Naomi is at her desk on the first floor and Katya can physically see how frazzled she is.

“What’s going on?” Katya lights her cig and sits her ass down on the desk. She can feel the exhaustion it causes Naomi from her sheer energy as she pulls a file out from underneath her.

“Look, Katya, you know we can’t smoke in here. You have to keep it upstairs. And, okay,” she sighs and lets herself relax against the back of her chair. Ginger is whispering to Courtney in the corner over the newspaper and the meeting at 3 seems ages away. Naomi is looking up at her, like she’s waiting for her to realize what she’s about to say.

“...What?” Katya exhales smoke to the ceiling. Naomi sighs again.

“The protest Saturday, you _know_ that people are worried about it. And I’m not going to try to convince people to come anymore. Courtney doesn’t want to go to jail again since, and I quote: ‘her niece will be in town,’ and I’m not going to try to push Kim on anything, okay,” Katya rolls her eyes and exhales smoke half in Naomi’s face. She waves it away without flinching.

“Look,” Katya drops to kneel on the floor. Which she’ll need to sweep immediately after standing up, it’s dirty and gritty like usual. The mothers that come in in the early afternoon for lunch will hardly complain, but it gives Katya peace of mind to know that everything is clean for them.

She slams her elbows down to the desk, her stomach is still in knots over Trixie’s question and her legs are still twitching from her orgasm. She squishes the butt in the ashtray Naomi leaves on her desk for this exact purpose.

“Look! I know that they’re scared. And you do too. Okay. It’s settled. People are scared. So? People are always fucking scared. If they’re scared, nobody’s forcing them to go anywhere. They can stay at home, with their kids and granola boyfriends and femmes and we can go fuck shit up. I know plenty of women that are planning to come and plenty of gays that are too,” Naomi has her head in her hands. 

Katya pulls another cig from her pocket and lights it between her teeth. She’s said her piece.

“Okay, okay, you’re right. You always fucking are, but don’t let that go to your head. Fuck, see, you already have,” Katya smiles and turns to Trixie who’s just come down the stairs. Her ass looks amazing in denim shorts.

“Hi baby,” Katya slides an arm around her waist and pulls her cig out of her mouth, tries to set it between Trixie’s lips.

“Katya,” Trixie’s voice is low as she pushes Katya’s hand away. “Remember our talk…?”

“Oh, shit, right, gotta have you pristine,” Katya presses a loud kiss to her cheek and Trixie turns so she can kiss her on the lips.

“Mmm, that’s right,” Trixie is smiling into the kiss, and, shit, Katya wants her pregnant, wants her round and soft and gorgeous, wants her horny and hungry. Fuck.

“Hey, you busy this morning?” Katya says into her hair, she’s also grabbing Trixie’s ass, and Trixie just made her cum but she’s hornier than she’s ever been, especially at the memory of Trixie squatting on the floor, rubbing herself off through her panties as she fingered Katya gently at the kitchen table.

“Not as busy as I could be, why?” Trixie extracts herself from Katya’s grip and Katya takes a long drag, leaving Naomi behind where she’s already crossing names off a long list at her desk, ignoring them.

“I think we could do some shopping around.” Trixie whips her head around, narrows her eyes. God, she’s so cute, the freckles on her forehead are lost in confused wrinkles.

“For what.”

“Well, we need groceries. But I know a few gays.” Trixie’s eyes widen and her lips turn up.

“Okay,” she grins. Katya’s stomach is in her throat. 

Ginger is eyeing them, her unlit pipe stuck between her teeth. Courtney is still whining to her and Katya has no desire to figure out what that’s about. Katya smiles wide and kisses Trixie on the corner of the mouth.

“Let’s leave in an hour, ‘kay? Ginger’s about to chew me out, I can feel it, and then I’ve gotta sweep,” Katya lets go of Trixie’s soft arm and stalks over to Ginger and Courtney. They’re standing in the dusty light from the front window next to the door. Courtney is gesturing wildly, almost knocking Ginger’s coffee out of her hand.

“What’s wrong,” Katya says deadpan, Ginger’s eyes are begging her for help.

Courtney turns to her, grunts in despair, and pushes past her to sit defiantly at her desk. Katya ignores her.

“What’s up with you and Barbie? She looks like you just promised her the sun, moon, stars, and fresh produce for life.” Katya eyes Trixie, already working on corrections with her red pen at her desk. She’s biting her bottom lip like she does.

“Don’t worry about it, maybe I did.” Ginger lights her pipe and puffs on it a few times as she scans Katya’s face.

“Don’t get into anything you can’t get out of,” Ginger mumbles. Katya rolls her eyes. Ginger is one to talk, falling in love with every single woman that comes in needing a place to stay, she’ll cook them elaborate meals and babysit for them so they can shower, she spends time with them and drives them around the city in her pickup, hides her pipe in her desk drawer until she finds somewhere for them to relocate.

“Sure,” Katya leaves her on the windowseat, heads to the broom closet and starts sweeping, goes over the whole main floor in 45 minutes, and then she runs back upstairs to grab her bag and put on some shoes. 

Trixie is waiting for her at the front door, trying to contain her smile. The center is busier, now, and Katya feels a little bad for leaving them to fend for themselves, but Kim is just coming in and Kim is organized enough to keep Courtney and Ginger in line. 

And Katya wants to spend the day with her woman, who could blame her when she’s practically already glowing.

Katya opens the passenger seat door for Trixie to climb into Alaska’s old pickup, she’s inherited it since Alaska scavenged a newer one, and Trixie’s giggle is muffled as Katya slams the door behind her.

“You buckled?” Katya eyes her to check, Trixie is buckled in and oh-so-pretty, her hair is cascading down her breasts almost all the way to her lap. She’s unreal and Katya wants her nose buried in her pussy, wants to motorboat her titties.

Katya finally gets the engine going, after only three tries, and pulls out of their spot down the block. Trixie turns on the radio, low enough that they’ll be able to talk.

“What’s our budget for today?” Trixie is digging in Katya’s bag for her wallet, she’ll count all the bills and coins carefully, setting them out in her lap no matter what Katya says, just to make sure.

“Hmmmm, I don’t know, twenty?” Katya is hunched over the wheel, squinting at the road. She straightens and widens her eyes, blinks a few times. She needs a new prescription, probably, but they don’t have the money for that. She’ll be fine so long as she doesn’t think about it. She pushes her glasses up quickly and they fall right back down.

“Yep. Twenty. Shit,” Trixie sighs and clinks all the coins back into the worn leather.

“Fuck.” Katya was hoping that it’d maybe be just a little more, maybe fifty. Or even thirty. It’s stressful trying to feed an entire fucking building as well as pay for that building. Along with whatever goes into outreach. And everything else. It’s giving Katya a headache just considering it.

She’ll sit with Bob at the kitchen table some nights, chain smoking quick like she never does, over piles and piles of paper, stacks of bills and receipts and budgets. And Katya might let a couple tears leak out when Bob stomps away angrily for fresh air, might let a sob sneak through when she knows that Trixie is fast asleep in their bed and that she’ll be able to touch her soon.

How are they going to have a baby when they don’t have the money to ensure that they have somewhere to live?

“Hey. It’ll be okay. We can wait.” Trixie’s voice is so fucking soft. And she doesn’t even sound disappointed. 

“No. Trixie,” Katya pulls into their usual spot at the supermarket. “We’ll have enough money, okay.”

She turns to Trixie as she pulls the key from the ignition. Her eyes are kind and Katya can’t bear how sad she knows they’ll get if she can’t grow a baby inside her, especially now that Katya’s okayed the whole thing.

“We have nine months to think about it and plan for it, yeah? That’s so long. I went from casually fuckin’ ya to knowing I was gonna spend the rest of my life with ya in nine months,” Katya says, squeezing her hand tight where nobody’ll be able to see it, down low in Trixie’s lap.

Trixie huffs a tiny laugh, and that’ll have to be good enough for now. Katya can feed her ice cream in bed tonight until she’s full and tired and happy.

“Let’s go!” Katya jumps out of the truck and Trixie follows. They shop for the whole center, buying in bulk as always. Katya lifts everything into the cart and Trixie drools over her off to the side. They have a good system and Katya likes to sometimes pull Trixie’s arm to gently move her to the side in the frozen food aisle, just so she can feel the cool air on her warm skin.

And then they’re driving up the streets of San Francisco, Trixie yelling along to the radio, Katya laughing and wiggling under the hand she has clamped around her thigh. Katya chugs the truck to pull into the parking spot in front of the too-clean house that’s almost always taken but is somehow blessedly empty. 

It’s still cloudy but Trixie grabs her hand right when she hops out of the passenger side, and her hand is warm and strong. Katya leads her up to the door, which opens with a pale hand before she can lift her tanned one to knock.

“Katya!” Max squeals, wraps his arms around her neck and pulls her in, leans down to kiss both her cheeks, knocks their noses against each other’s. And then he pulls back and sees Trixie, and Katya can see how he looks her up and down, eyes sparkling, can see his approval in how he nods.

“And this must be the lovely Trixie,” he says his words chewed, around twisting lips. Katya laughs and Trixie giggles a little, releases Katya’s hand so he can pull her in for a hug and two matching kisses. “You are beautiful, my dear.”

“Thank you,” Trixie blushes, takes KAtya’s hand again as Max gestures to them to come inside. The house is immaculate and trendy, his tiny dog is yapping at their feet and trying to bite their ankles the instant they cross the threshold.

“Sebastian!” Max scolds, bends his impossibly lanky body to pick the dog up, pet down it’s fluffy fur in a more fashionable style. Trixie stifles a giggle, and Katya turns to grin at her.

They’re led to the expensive living room and before Katya can protest Max is in the kitchen making them tea that’ll likely be served on a tiny, delicate tea set, one of hundreds Katya knows live in Max’s endless cupboards.

“How do you _know_ him?” Trixie is still laughing at the dog, which is sitting pompously on his little silk doggy bed in the corner of the room, watching them with haughty eyes. “This is insane.”

“I got him out of a jam last year, his ex was going to blackmail him and he didn’t want to have to pay for that, ya know, rich people are the stingiest fuckers alive. So I sorted it out, and the rest is history. He owes me a big favor,” Katya winks at Trixie, who blushes unconsciously, a tiny smile growing on her lips.

Everything is in shades of purple and blue in the living room, the house is fairly small but everything inside is pumped full of wealth and self-importance. Katya feels a little bit out of place, she hasn’t worn a lick of makeup in three years and her hair is still pulled up high and tangled on top of her head. She has a coffee stain on the knee of her jeans, and she’s sure that the bells of them have been dragged in the mud and not been washed since, and she wasn’t wearing socks with her clogs so she’s barefoot on the expensive hardwood.

Trixie looks similarly uncomfortable except with mascara, brushed cascading hair and a white peasant shirt. She keeps pulling her cutoffs down nervously, trying to get them to cover the tops of her thighs and ass. At least she’s wearing socks, little lace ones that Katya’s pulled off her tired feet many a time. She laughs when Katya pushes up her big glasses just for them to fall again.

“You need a new pair,” she whispers, the teapot is screeching in the kitchen. Katya crosses her legs on the armchair, grips the armrests.

“I know,” she sighs, snorts when Trixie rolls her eyes. 

And then Max is twirling into the room, he’s put on a sheer floral shawl around his pale arms, has buttoned up his black shirt all the way. He sets the tray down on the coffee table, pours three cups of tea and presumes their tastes by leaving Katya’s black and putting a spoonful of sugar and a drop of milk in Trixie’s. He sits next to Trixie on the couch and the dog patters over to jump onto his lap. He sits and pets him, putting spoonful after spoonful of sugar into his cup.

“So, Katya, how is the Center for Women?” He looks right into Katya’s eyes, engages her with disarming rehearsed manners. Katya loves it.

“Damn good, I’ll say. I mean, we’re always budgeting and cutting things but I think we’ve got it all mostly in hand,” Katya looks to Trixie, she’s smiling and blushing and beautiful on the purple velvet couch. She’s settled back against the embroidered pillows with her tea, and she’s watching Katya with dark eyes, how she gets when Katya takes charge. “Trixie writes the fliers and newsletters, I don’t know what I would do without her pretty face.”

Trixie blushes redder, her nose getting pinker. Katya wishes they were all cuddled up together on the couch, so she could stick her hand in Trixie’s hair, or around her soft shoulders in her loose top. Max would hate it, and she swallows a snort at the image.

“Well it seems very well-run, despite everything you’ve got going against you, dear,” Max sips his tea silently, and Trixie follows suit. She’s shifting her socked feet on the floor, she keeps looking over at Katya anxiously and Katya finally sets her teacup down on her saucer with a little ‘clink’ and turns to Max, who swallows and sets his down, too.

“We’re here for a reason.” Katya folds her hands in her lap, and Max nods.

“I had figured.” He smiles encouragingly at Trixie, then reaches behind himself to turn on the lamp. His fingers bump against the fringe along the shade, and it tinkles with the tiny crystals that are on the ends of each piece of thread.

Trixie coughs, looks to Katya, imploring her to speak. Katya nods, winks at her, watches how it makes her relax again. But she’s tensed up, and Katya is too. If this doesn’t work she’ll need to think of another option, and she isn’t sure that she has one.

“Would you be our sperm donor?”

It’s so silent that Katya can hear Sebastian’s tiny wheezing breaths loud and clear. Trixie’s hands are clenched together, and she’s staring at the floor and the persian rug that’s almost sterile with how clean it looks. Katya won’t look away from Max’s gray eyes, though, stares him down and tries to telepathically express how little of a choice he has in the matter. 

He blinks, breathes in, opens his mouth and shuts it again. Katya keeps staring. Trixie has pulled her arms around her, her thighs are clenched together, and she’s tugging at a stray curl that’s falling down her arm.

“Why?” Katya snorts at his question, at how it echoes her own just this morning. Trixie seems to curl out of inside herself at Katya’s laugh, seems to brighten at Max’s nonrefusal.

“We want a baby,” Katya says matter-of-factly, and Trixie giggles a little bit. Max’s eyebrows are still raised up high, and he takes another tiny sip of tea. Katya imagines that it must be very satisfying for him, all of those tiny little sips, she imagines that he must never drink any more than a tongueful of liquid at a time, just like Sebastian. “And you owe me.”

Trixie sniffles a little, like she’s concerned that if Katya pushes it they’ll lose all of their chances. But Katya has endless practice convincing people, whether it be convincing them to donate, or convincing them to listen to her and let her lead, or convince the city to distribute funding. She knows when to push, when to lay off, and she almost has Max convinced. She can see it in his resigned look.

“‘Cmon, girl, you know you owe me. You don’t even have to know the little thing, you don’t have to pay for it’s education or anything. We’ll be the parents, and sure, you can visit if you ever wanna, but no way are you required to do anything but donate, we’re totally prepared to take care of everything else.”

Katya sighs out all the rest of the air that’s built up inside of her from her argument, and Trixie looks down at the floor again. Max is just petting the dog slowly, and then he nods.

“Alright,” he says grimly. Katya can see the sparkle in his eyes, though, she can tell that he loves the idea of having even just one singular offspring to carry on his legacy. And then Katya’s heart jumps into her throat when she realizes just what that means. 

“Thank you, thank you,” Trixie whispers, putting a hand on his shoulder and nodding, Katya can see how she’s crying a little bit, too, and Max lifts a hand from the dog to shake hers gently. 

“And of course I’m paying for the child, don’t be ridiculous. I have plenty to spare when I’m hardly going to have children of my own, and the child will get my inheritance when I die, I’ll be writing all of this up once you’re expecting, sign it all off,” Trixie’s jaw is on the floor, practically, and Katya grins at her, doesn’t even attempt to hold in her excitement for Max’s sake. His awkward, stilted speech doesn't even register, the words mean too much.

She jumps up and kisses Max on the forehead, and then she curls up right in Trixie’s lap, kissing her on the lips three short times before wrapping her arms around her neck and pressing their cheeks together, gripping Max’s hand where it’s resting on his knee. The dog is yapping too loudly, and Max tries and fails to shush it as Katya squeezes his fingers as tightly as she can, as Trixie’s tears fill her mouth.

Two hours later they’re still at Max’s seemingly cozier house, and he’s taken off his shoes and loaded all of them up on wine. Trixie has her head in Katya’s lap, and she’s taken Katya’s hair out of it’s bun and begged Max for a brush so she can reach up and brush it slowly, drunkenly.

Katya keeps giggling when Trixie yanks at a tangle, and Max has taken out a huge puzzle that he’s doing on the floor next to them. Katya is supposed to be helping but instead she’s looking down at Trixie and her soft face, pressing down on her button nose with a finger as Bob Dylan crackles on the record player in the corner. 

More of the lamps have turned on and Sebastian is curled up on Trixie’s stomach, sleeping. Trixie is taking tiny shallow breaths so that she doesn’t bother him, and Katya doesn’t have the heart to tell her that it probably doesn’t make much of a difference. 

Max had brought out the wine to start a serious conversation about the baby and what they (Trixie) were planning to do with it, what they (Trixie) had already considered about how to raise it. And they talked about it, and then they were drunk, and now they’re sprawled out on the floor, the bones of Katya’s ass rubbing painfully against the wood.

“Katya, please, come help,” Max calls from across the floor. Katya looks at him and shakes her head, lets her hair fall in a sheet over the side of her face. She laughs as Trixie’s fingers go to tug it, slides her body out from under Trixie and crawls over to her bag that’s sitting on the chair.

She pulls out two joints, passes one to Max with a smirk. He stuffs it between his lips immediately and lets her light it, continues on the puzzle while smoking. Katya slides on her knees back over to Trixie, lifts her head to put it back on her lap, props her back against the footrest of the armchair. The room is smoky in minutes, and Trixie’s eyes are blinking up at her as she takes drags of the joint, brings it with fuzzy fingers down to Trixie’s pink lips and lets her suck at it as she holds it for her.

“So Trixie,” Max croaks. They’re all on the couch, somehow. The record has been changed to some kind of ‘60s crooning ballads, and Trixie’s hands are on Katya’s thighs that are crossed over hers.

“Yeah,” Trixie whispers. Katya’s hands are on her scalp, rubbing and twisting her hair between her fingers. She has freckles all along her hairline, too. Katya counts them all the way up to thirty, and then she isn’t even halfway across, so she gives up with a huff.

“When’s the best time for you, if I was to, you know, bring over a donation?” Katya laughs loudly and yanks on Trixie’s curls on accident. Trixie squeezes her thighs and glares at her, but her eyes are dark and Katya trails a finger to her mouth without thinking. “I’m serious!”

Max’s accent is missing now that he’s high, but his voice has gotten higher and he has more of a lisp. Katya wants to write a book about him, with his sweeping movements and affected airs, and then she’s wondering if her baby will have some of the same mannerisms. She hopes it does, a little.

All of the velvet drapes are closed so that the lamps are the only source of light, and Max reaches across Katya’s shoulders to tap Trixie.

“Next week,” Trixie turns, says to him across Katya’s body. “You should call before you come over. Put it in… something,” she bursts into sweet laughter right in Katya’s ear, then, and Katya makes the executive, almost-sober decision that it’s time for them to get home. 

They bid Max and Sebastian goodbye at the door, and Trixie giggles the whole way to the car. She doesn’t stop holding Katya’s hand the entire drive home, and the sun is setting over the rooftops and reflecting in Trixie’s bloodshot eyes. Her top is falling down her shoulder and Katya slides a finger under her bra strap, hooks it around and holds Trixie’s hand up there on her chest. Her skin is impossibly warm.

The car almost dies on the way up the hill of their street, but she slaps the dash and it chugs forward a little, pushes through the last twenty feet to their usual parking spot. Trixie is still smiling, she’s glowing and shiny. She pulls up her shirt so that it’s evenly distributed on both shoulders, and she leads Katya through the front door, exclaims at the newsletters piled in the corner on top of the city newspapers.

Trixie is drunk on joy and wine, high on Katya’s sativa and the knowledge that she’s going to be a mother. Katya can spot Ginger squinting at them, pipe missing, and she prepares herself for the new woman that’s come in to stay with them today. Ginger’s hidden her pipe away and Courtney still looks worried, but all in all the white walls are look cozy with the posters hanging neatly on them, the desks are covered in papers and pens and half-done plans and budgets.

Katya is proud of all of it. Even the ugly parts. When Bob had come to her near the end of her senior year she had almost laughed in her face at the request to take over her job, but Katya is so grateful, so glad that she did. She loves it, loves being in charge and loves knowing what to do, loves making the decisions and pumping everyone up to do their absolute best every single day.

She loves _helping_ , loves connecting to women and loving women unconditionally, with Trixie by her side. And whenever she brings back a haul of groceries and everyone rushes to help like right now, or whenever she comes down in the morning to a chipper Courtney at 6am she’s reminded of why she’s here.

Because she’s a lesbian, because she’s a woman, and because Trixie hauled her ass out of that empty bathtub after the end of senior year, lit a cigarette between her lips to shut her up, and chewed her out in their dingy apartment with roaches littering the table between them.

She convinced her to do it, and the convincing had mostly to do with how Trixie waxed them as a lesbian power couple, with the ability to do good and learn and help. And Katya could never say no to her. Not to her earnest eyes or her pink skirt, not to her kisses or her ass or how she fucks Katya when they’re both high.

Everyone brings in the groceries and starts making dinner in the kitchen, but Katya sits on Trixie’s desk as she makes the last of the flier corrections for the upcoming protest. Katya twists her hair around her own wrist over and over, sliding it between her fingers, and her heartbeat syncs up with the little scratches of Trixie’s red pen.

It’s dark outside, and Katya can feel her bones and heart settling now that they’re back from Max’s house. It’s the feeling after taking a test you were worried about, of putting so much weight on a tiny moment in time that you can hardly control, and once it’s finished you can feel your fingers buzzing and your heartbeat slowing. Trixie keeps looking up at her through her lashes, and Katya never stops smiling down at her.

The yelling in the kitchen only stops once Katya knows that dinner is being distributed to all of the women staying the night, and Trixie finishes the flier, leaves it on Naomi’s desk and turns to face Katya.

“Coming up?” She asks, and her eyes are shining with anticipation. Katya knows that she’s expecting to be let down, Katya usually wants to close up and speak with all of the new arrivals before she heads up for dinner and bed with Trixie, but tonight is a special night and they both know it. Trixie deserves Katya meandering over to her, wrapping her arms around her waist in her jeans.

Trixie grins into Katya’s endless sheet of hair, places her palms flat on the small of her back. 

“I’m coming up,” Katya whispers, walks her backwards step by step to the stairs. Trixie’s breasts are so soft and big against hers, her shirt is so soft on Katya’s chest. Someone’s turned on some Queen in the kitchen and it’s echoing past the door, Freddie is screaming for somebody to love and Katya’s got her in her arms. She’s so fucking lucky, and she leaves her cigarettes on Naomi’s desk half on accident.

Trixie giggles when Katya pushes her so that the backs of her bare ankles bump against the bottom stair. Katya can feel the vibration in her back, and she squeezes her fingers into Trixie’s shirt.

“God I love you,” Katya says. The music has been cranked up and people are yelling and laughing over their food. Katya knows that all they have upstairs is cheese and crackers but she twirls Trixie around anyways, takes her hand and looks into her sparkling eyes, pulls her up the stairs one or two steps behind her. 

When they get to their living room Katya puts her hands right to squeezing her breasts in her flimsy bra and thin shirt. Trixie gasps and kisses her immediately, her lips fit so well and both of their eyes are wide open. The music is still playing but it’s muffled by five floors of empty beds and storage closets and then the door when Katya shuts it right behind them. 

She pushes Trixie up against the door, disconnects their lips but for a tiny string of saliva that Katya doesn’t want to move to break. But then Trixie is laughing through her nose and Katya can’t help but join her, can’t help but gently pull her back from the door by the upper arms and lead her to the bedroom.

The sheets are mussed from the night before. The bed is rarely made, it’s hard to find that kind of motivation when you live and work in the same building. They only ever sleep and fuck in here, but Katya’s still filled the dusty bookshelf and the side tables of the queen bed with books. She hasn’t read all of them and many of them have been gifted to her, but they’re all over the apartment and they give the otherwise-bare bedroom a little bit of life.

And Trixie lights the candles that have melted in their little glass saucers in the two big windows with Katya’s lighter from her back pocket. The sun has gone down but the bedroom is still warm from how the sun heats it through the open windows during the day, the sheets are nice against Katya’s arms and bare feet. She buries her face into the sun-bleached floral pillowcase for a second to smell the sunshine and Trixie’s shampoo and when she turns back around Trixie is naked, standing at the end of the bed.

“Dolly,” Katya whispers and Trixie’s smile spreads at her favorite nickname. She bites her bottom lip like she does when Katya is really treating her like a princess, sprawled out across the sheets, and climbs onto the bed with bouncing breasts to kneel at Katya’s feet.

Trixie’s fingers are on the zipper of her jeans before she can even process it, and her naked body hovering over Katya’s thighs, flashing in the candlelight is especially beautiful after six years.

“Lift your butt,” Trixie laughs, and Katya follows her instructions so she can pull the tight denim down her hips and thighs. Katya’s lost weight from walking everywhere for outreach and Trixie’s gained it from writing and publishing and being smart, and Trixie’s soft stomach is Katya’s favorite place to lay her head. She doesn’t know if her sharp hipbones are comfortable for Trixie to put her own against, but she seems to enjoy it just as much as she did the first time they fucked. 

Trixie’s hands can circle her wrists, then, and she pulls her up for a slow kiss. And Katya’s brain catches up with Trixie’s, and she pulls her shirt up and off, only breaking their lips apart for a second. Trixie’s eyes are shining and Katya hardly knows what to do about that, but she pulls Trixie down on top of her so that her breaths are trapped a little in her chest.

Trixie’s hands cup her cheeks and their noses bump. Trixie is smiling but then her tears are dripping onto Katya’s cheeks, splashing into her eyes so her eyes blink rapidly on their own. Trixie laughs against her mouth with trembling lips.

“Sorry,” she says. Katya grins back at her, her aching back from Max’s hardwood floor against the sheets and Trixie’s arms propped on her shoulders. “I love you too.”

Katya laughs and pulls her in for a kiss by the hair on her temples. Trixie squeals at the tugging but kisses Katya sloppily, lets Katya thrust up against her thigh. Katya sighs into the kiss and then her heart is skipping a beat. Trixie’s fingers are pressed on her chest so that she can feel it under Katya’s skin, and then she’s bringing her fingers to Katya’s pulse point at her neck, pressing two between her tendons to feel her heart beating as they kiss. Katya can feel Trixie’s heartbeat in her stomach where it’s hot against her own.

Katya is horny but Trixie is crying on top of her, digging her fingers into Katya’s throat to feel her heartbeat, and Katya can tell that she’s still high, can taste the hot mixture of wine and weed in her teeth.

And Katya’s body has learned to lie under Trixie for as long as it can get, for as long as Trixie allows it before she wants to switch positions, so Katya just rubs herself against Trixie’s thigh, soaking her, as Trixie’s happy tears drip into both of their mouths and erase the wine with salt.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s downing sleepytime tea at a disturbing rate, cuddled on the couch beneath the arched ceiling. The straps of her tank top keep slipping down, and she stops her soft hands from turning the pages of the baby book to pull them back up. Katya is perched in the windowsill, chomping on an apple amidst revelations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot even describe how good it feels to finish this and also how sad I am to do so! I'm going to miss this fic. I've spent the most time on this, I've deleted shit and put it back in, I've spent months listening to 70s music and crying over this, and I'm so proud of it. I love these two women. They are honest and good, and I'm proud of how far they've come. Thank you all for sticking with me through this, I appreciate your patience and encouragement and I am so humbled when I get a comment on any part of this series. It means everything to me that people still read it.
> 
> Here is a long finale for you all. This is dedicated to all of the readers of this fic who waited for me and who love these ladies :)
> 
> Lots of this has been very heavily edited, and some of this has not been edited at all. It's a break from the usual "just write it and post it" sort of thing I've done in the past with this fic. I wrote the ending real fast, just as an homage to the original carelessness of it all.
> 
> Warnings for a fairly rough fight and mentions of drug use.

“Baby, stay still for a little. Wait, maybe wiggle around. Fuck if I know,” Katya is laughing, Trixie’s face is red from where Katya is holding the rest of her body up, fingers digging into her ass. She looks so pretty, sweaty and exhausted against the pillows.

“Katya!” Katya drops Trixie’s butt instantly at the voice, and her heart shoots into her throat with surprise. Trixie’s foot whacks her in the nose. 

“Sorry!” Trixie whines as Katya climbs off of the bed, wipes the sweat and come off of her face with the sheet, slips her bathrobe over her naked body.

“Baby, you just pull the covers up and let that sit, okay? You just relax.” Katya looks back to see her do just that, opens the door a crack when she’s all covered up. 

Bob is towering over her, holding stacks and stacks of white paper and manila folders. Her arms are trembling with the weight, and her chin rests atop the pile, to keep it steady. Katya’s eyes widen. She leads her to the dining room table, gestures for her to set the papers down. She does, and the table groans.

“What’s all this?” Katya is lighting a cig already. She’s quitting, and she needs one now if she’s going to last the night without another. Bob is holding out her hand for one, and Katya lights it for her. Bob’s eyebrows are to the ceiling, regarding her as if she should be ashamed, but with a tinge of confusion at her attitude. Katya is almost certain that the hair at her temples is wet with Trixie. She can’t bring herself to care. She hopes hard that it worked, doesn’t want to jinx it by coming out and confessing. Bob seems ready to speak, and Katya leans back against the chair.

“ _This_ is what happens when we don’t think about the consequences of our rash actions,” Bob says around her cigarette. She’s left the center for more capitalist, governmental pastures, working in city planning and funding. She comes back once a month (maybe more depending on how much Katya has screwed everything up) to talk with Katya, and Katya is way upwards of grateful for her support.

Katya met Bob in her freshman year of college, when she had first started volunteering for the Center for Women. They had become fast friends, Bob towering over her on walks in the park and late-night poetry readings stoned out of their minds.

And life happened to them both, but Bob still came to campus to see Katya and stay with her and Trixie every few months. And one morning in their little kitchen that Katya always kept stocked with two jars of weed, she had set her palms on the table and asked Katya to take over for her. Katya had guzzled two cups of coffee without speaking, had lit a joint and stared into Trixie’s eyes, begging her for direction.

Now, Bob wears work-appropriate dresses and expensive wigs. She’s integrated herself without losing her anger-- she’s sublimated it into working much harder than Katya’s ever seen anyone work to push her democratic agenda. She’s ten thousand times more professional and suddenly terrifying, and if Katya didn’t know her better she would buckle under the pressure of being judged by the smartest, most intimidating woman she’s ever met. She’s traded weed for cigarettes, nights to the club with Katya and Alaska to nights alone in her average-sized home, surrounded with law books. She’s ruthless, Katya watches her speak on TV and gets shivers across her entire body. She calls Katya to talk about business from her office and is so _on_ that Katya can hardly recognize her voice.

But when Bob comes to the center she smiles the instant she sees Katya, hugs her tight and close and goes on and on about how much she misses her. And then she rags on her for hours about proper funding and everything she’s doing wrong. Katya knows she does it because she loves her, loves this old building and loves the women in it, so she takes all of her advice and applies it the best she can. And the only thing that Bob truly hates is Katya getting distracted by Trixie, because she insists that Katya should be working as much as possible if she’s living on-site.

It’s one of the only places where they disagree, and Katya’s okay with that. But she’s also grinning around her cig thinking about how hard she just fucked Trixie, how Trixie’s hips and cheeks were glistening with sweat, how she had filled Trixie to the brim with a baby, hopefully. Bob looks up from the paper’s she’s rummaging through and squints through the smoke at her.

“What.” It isn’t a question. Katya wheezes, she can see the light in Bob’s eyes behind her faux-disappointed expression. Bob can see right through all of Katya’s put-on airs in a matter of seconds. “Tell me.”

Katya leans forward on the creaky table, takes her cig from between her lips and exhales through her nose. She can’t keep her grin from growing, and Bob’s smile starts to mirror her’s just in empathy of the good vibes Katya can feel herself exuding right now. Katya doesn’t see the harm in telling the most balanced woman she knows about it, anymore. There’s nobody else Katya would want to know, so early on it’s impossible to be sure. She can’t keep it in.

“We’re going to have a baby,” Katya whispers so Trixie can’t hear. She can hear the faint noise of a record Trixie must have put on in the bedroom and doubts that she’s listening in at the door, but Katya knows that Trixie doesn’t want to tell the world just yet. Bob won’t tell, though, and Katya can’t hold it in. Her stomach swoops in excitement when Bob’s eyes widen and she slowly puts her cig out in the ashtray by her elbow.

“You’re what?” She’s smiling and she looks completely confused, on the verge of laughter, and Katya nods.

“We’re having a baby.”

“She’s pregnant?” Bob tilts her head to the bedroom and Katya nods again, then shakes her head.

“I mean, we only just, _you know_ ,” Katya raises her eyebrows, sits back down off where she’s propped herself up on her knees and laughs a little. “But… you know when you’ve just got a feeling?” Katya exhales the words as if they’re the only thing she’s ever said that she’s truly meant, and Bob nods slowly.

“Wow,” Bob stands to cross over to the sink for water as she nods slowly, repeatedly. Katya pulls her bathrobe tighter around her waist. “Wow, Katya, lesbian moms.”

“Lesbian moms,” Katya grins. She puts out her cig and stands to help Bob find the jars that she used to stuff weed in that are now used in a more civilized fashion for drinking glasses, fills them with water and sets them down on the table far from the stacks of papers.

Katya pushes the loose braid she put her hair in in anticipation for hot breeder sex off of her shoulder so it hangs down her back. She holds out a hand for the first folder Bob has prepared for her but Bob is sitting again in her navy blue dress, legs crossed and lips pursed, one eyebrow raised.

“You know what?” She asks, and Katya’s heart starts thumping a little faster. She isn’t really prepared to defend herself to the best debater she’s ever met, especially not when she’s exhausted and probably stinky, and her thighs are still twitching from her orgasm.

“What.” Katya says, monotone. Bob’s eyebrows fly up and she waves her hand in the air, shakes her head.

“No, no Katya. Katya, I just wanted to say how proud I am to know you.” She’s smiling and her hair is lit from behind like a halo from the streetlamp, her yellow headband is shining. Katya feels a heavy rush of love for her, feels it climbing up the back of her neck and threatening tears. But she grins instead of letting them fall, takes a long drink of water and watches Bob smile at her over the rim of the jar.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. I couldn’t have picked anyone better to do this,” Bob nods almost to herself, and Katya’s heart skips a beat. And then she passes Katya the first folder as if nothing has changed, as if Katya’s shoulders haven’t relaxed fully for the first time in years, as if she didn’t just give Katya the validation she didn’t even know that she’s always needed.

They sit and go over all of the papers, and by the time they’re done it’s almost 1am and Katya’s dug around for her glasses, then later on set them on the table so she can rub the sleep out of her eyes as it pops up uninvited. When Bob leaves she hugs Katya even tighter than usual, pats her twice on the head so Katya grunts in indignation. 

“Thank you,” Katya whispers, right before she kisses her cheek. She smells familiar, with a fancier perfume than she wore in college hovering over her, and Katya feels like she’s back in their old apartment in the wee hours of the morning, bidding her goodbye only to turn around and settle with Trixie on the couch to do last-minute homework.

“I love you, girl.” Bob lets herself out, and Katya props her butt on the edge of the sink. She can hear Trixie’s heavy breathing from the bedroom, had heard the shower running earlier. She smiles to herself, can’t help her stomach from swirling with joy, and places all of the plates and cups into the sink to soak them overnight. She can wash them tomorrow morning, when Trixie is sitting at the table eating her toast.

“I’m coming in!” Katya calls out on her way over, pushes the bedroom door open. Trixie is lying in the sheets, all showered, completely naked. She waves at Katya cheekily, winks so that Katya jumps on the bed next to her, pulls her into her arms. “You tired?”

Trixie nods and it sends her into a yawn. It’s dark outside, Trixie flicks the lamp off as Katya settles in. Katya can feel the anticipation already building, can feel all of her limbs sticking to Trixie’s in the heat. She places a hand on Trixie’s stomach, and Trixie giggles, slips her fingers to meet it. Katya holds her hand loosely, so that her fingers don’t ache. Katya can keep her anticipation deep down in her gut, for now.

Trixie is asleep in minutes and Katya is barely hanging on from drifting off. Trixie’s limbs are hot as always, she radiates so much more heat in sleep than she does while awake, or maybe Katya just feels it more when they’re naked against each other.

Trixie’s little snores start, the ones she gives when she’s truly exhausted and unbothered by her dreams. Katya can feel them settle in her stomach, can feel most of her worries about the baby and Trixie’s health and the future of the center dissolve a little into tiny bubbles that pop softly.

Katya will always have Trixie. It took two years of school and four years of work for her to really absorb that, but now that Trixie is beside her fast asleep without a care in the world but for if she’s pregnant with Katya’s baby, Katya has truly understood the meaning of Trixie sticking by her through all of it.

She knows, in the back of her mind, that Trixie wanted to go to work for the LA Times or off in New York, she knows that she could have done it with her four point oh from Berkeley. She could have done anything with her journalism degree, the reality of her sex aside. 

But she’s here with her head on Katya’s chest in their bedroom that desperately needs to be repainted, in the building that Katya is in charge of, working for Katya, writing fliers and little paragraphs that they can sneak in the paper. Sure it’s hard-hitting and groundbreaking, but her writing isn’t being shown off in the way that both of them know it deserves.

But every morning Trixie wakes up smiling, kisses Katya with morning breath and pulls her out of bed. She likes it more than Katya does, because she likes the chaos, likes watching Katya be in charge, likes making a difference with the words she writes directly rather than writing articles that serve to politicians and billionaires and men.

And she’s told Katya all of this, has yelled it in excitement over breakfast on protest days, has kissed Katya on the lips downtown at the front of the street filled with angry, proud women, has left a space for Katya to perch on her desk and scream instructions when nobody is listening. Trixie watches her with a little smile, cheers her on with a finger through her belt loop. 

And Trixie wants her to be the mother of her baby. Trixie trusts her to raise a child with her, trusts her to keep that baby safe and sound. Trixie wants them to raise that baby with lesbian moms, in 1979, in a home teetering on the 5th floor of Katya’s Center for Women. She trusts Katya enough, loves Katya enough, and Katya’s eyes blur and the room spins and she grips Trixie’s soft arm to ground herself. 

Katya is crass, messy, and barefoot. She almost flunked out of Berkeley, she was steps away from saying no to Bob’s offer and wandering the rest of her life, running with Alaska and ending up god knows where. But her one redeeming virtue is how she let Trixie sit her down and shut her up, let Trixie lead, and everything that she’s proud of now leads back to how she loves Trixie and lets Trixie love her.

She could have done it on her own, sure. But she hates to imagine it, hates to imagine sleeping up here alone and walking down the staircase alone, hates to imagine not having a partner to bounce ideas off of and to set her straight when her goals are too lofty. Trixie brings her right back to ground when she’s high on dreams of perfection and helps her settle into reality, and every day Katya is excited to see what Trixie does that’s going to make her love her even more.

Katya lets Trixie’s snores rock her to sleep, and it’s dreamless and refreshing for the first time in forever, despite the conversation with Bob just fifteen minutes earlier.

\- - -

“We aren’t having this baby till we’re married.”

“Katya,” Trixie sighs. She’s downing sleepytime tea at a disturbing rate, cuddled on the couch beneath the arched ceiling. The straps of her tank top keep slipping down, and she stops her soft hands from turning the pages of the baby book to pull them back up. Katya is perched in the windowsill, chomping on an apple amidst revelations. 

“I’m serious. I think it sounds sweet. For you to be my wife,” Katya says, takes another bite. Trixie sighs again, long suffering and achey. Katya stands to stretch, drops the core on the plate on the coffee table and pulls Trixie’s feet out from under her, grips them tightly to begin massaging them. Trixie allows the grateful moan to fall from her bitten lips.

San Francisco sunsets always seem lavender to Katya. Lavender with hints of orange, pink from Trixie’s clothes, the color of her nipples. Trixie is _pregnant_ , with Katya’s baby, and Katya’s mind is whirling in possibility, in anxiety, but mostly in deep, deep love that only comes with a stupid, overplayed lavender sunset. Her throat closes up as she rubs the balls of Trixie’s feet, she brings one up to kiss her big toe. Katya painted her nails pink the night before, and they still smell a little like fresh nail polish. 

“Wives, huh,” Trixie replies quietly. “Mothers and wives. Lesbian mothers, lesbian wives.”

“Exactly.” Katya grins wickedly, wiggles her brows as she tickles her arch. Trixie squeals, drops the book on the floor, and yanks her entire leg far from Katya’s reach. She pivots to sit on her heels, wraps a hand around the back of Katya’s neck, where her hair is already standing on end. Her face comes close, so that Katya can smell dinner’s pasta on her breath.

“How am I going to say no when I convinced you to impregnate me?” Trixie asks. Katya groans, kisses her as she laughs. Trixie tickles her sides and slides her hands up her shirt, grips her breasts and kneads on them slowly as Katya slides her fingers below the waistband of her pajama boxers.

\- - -

They get married in the park across the street, on an early morning when the sun is just rising, at precisely the time that Katya is usually either fast asleep or stretching out on the living room floor. Trixie wears a pink nightgown and Katya wears her best jeans, a button-up shirt, brushes her hair down her back. Ginger officiates, reads out of a busted-up Bible that Courtney provided, and when Ginger pronounces them to be wives, Katya lifts Trixie in her arms, kisses her as gently as she possibly can, and then fucks her slowly in their exceptionally-clean bedroom.

\- - -

Trixie is sleeping.

She’s been dozing on and off the morning through, exhausted from campaigning and passing out fliers until two am the night before, gratefully hissing in joy as she allowed Katya to pull off her shoes and socks at the end of the night, as she lowered her body, heavier with baby and weight gained, into the warm water and soap of the tub. Katya had kissed the tops of her breasts and had rubbed down her feet and legs as Trixie had slowly scrubbed the rest of her, and Katya leaned across the cold edge of the tub to suck a nipple into her mouth, just to hear her whine out of her nose.

Katya sat in her sweat through the lengthy bathtime, had dug her fingers into the sore parts of Trixie’s hips under the water, and then showered on her own in the dark after tucking Trixie in, half-asleep. She had run the water cold, to rush the sweat and smoke off of her body, to pound droplets against her aching calves. She had touched her toes, allowed her hair to nearly choke her upside-down with water running through it to the ground.

And she had shivered at the end of it, in the cool bathroom. She climbed into Trixie’s hot bubble beneath the sheets, had pressed her cold knees into Trixie’s warm thighs without her even stirring. She had fallen asleep with a hand on Trixie’s protruding stomach, matching Trixie’s slow breathing without noticing.

Trixie had woken and tapped Katya’s chest immediately to wake her the following morning, overtired. Katya made her breakfast, kissed her slowly and sweetly, nodded sincerely when Trixie whispered reminders of her promise to stay home for the demonstration. The moment Trixie’s eyes had fallen closed, Katya was lacing her boots, shutting the bedroom door quieter than she ever has before, sneaking down the stairs.

And here she is, on the edge of committing the cardinal sin. Naomi is staring her down from the corner, in a circle of women she’s brought from her classes. Katya ignores her judgement. She’s too young to understand just how much Katya can’t help herself, wrapped in a leather jacket and blue jeans, a brown scarf Trixie knitted her years ago and a hat that matches. She’s smoking anxiously, which is bringing up a foreboding understanding of her own guilt in her gut. 

And eventually, as expected, Ginger is at her side with a cigar between her fingers, wrapped in a massive scarf that was no doubt knitted by one of her many lovers, a mother from downtown that hardly has time to call her between finalizing her divorce and taking care of her three babies. 

“You’re in the process of making a bad decision,” she says. Katya pretends that she doesn’t hear, continues to smoke as if she’s taking a personal meditative moment. Ginger coughs, places a hand on her shoulder.

“Shut up, I am not. I’m going to be perfectly safe. You know I try to be safe,” Katya snaps between drags. Ginger rolls her eyes. Katya is getting tired of Ginger telling her right from wrong, she doesn’t know if she can take another slow analysis of her stupidity. She’s capable of being an adult, and she’s Ginger’s superior, anyways. She doesn’t deserve it, the constant questioning that used to keep her on her toes but is now somehow directed to her personal life more often than not.

“Trying isn’t good enough with you. You get too angry, you’ll get hurt and thrown in prison and Trixie won’t like it. What did you do to convince her to stay up there, huh? Drug her?” Katya growls, grips Ginger’s wrist. Her head is pounding, suddenly, and she wants to slap Ginger across the face, crush her stupid cigar between her fingers, cut a hole in her scarf so that it unravels slowly. She leans in close instead, so that her breath causes Ginger’s short bangs to wave.

“You need to shut up immediately, before I fucking fire you,” she breathes. Ginger laughs quietly in her face, shakes her head. Katya pulls back a bit to take another long drag, releases smoke from her mouth slowly so that Ginger coughs.

“You- you’re being so stupid, I can’t even stand you right now. I’m not going to help you, then, when you get in trouble with the wife tonight.” Ginger begins to walk away, towards the door. “And Katya? You would never fire me.”

Katya pushes all of it down, because she cannot stop herself from following the others out the front door when they leave, cannot stop herself from throwing herself up to the front of the line, cannot stop her hand from linking with Alaska’s when she spots her, so that they can hold onto each other tight, cannot stop herself from throwing her body forwards, from twisting free and swinging her bare fist into the jaw of the cop with his hands holding her elbows behind her back.

And she thinks about Trixie, as she does it. She can’t help but do all of it for Trixie, at home, trusting Katya with her baby.

\- - -

“I’ve always wanted to be _better_ than separatists, but. But, I can’t do it! I can’t do it anymore, not with all of this, it’s too much. It’s too much,” Trixie is whimpering, waving her hand in Katya’s face. She’d been bandaging Katya’s cut, right beneath her eye, just minutes before, when her blue eyes had filled with sudden tears. Katya had predicted this breakdown, the stress of the baby and the restlessness of the community weighing on Trixie for months.

“Trixie-”

“Shut up! Oh my god, shut up,” Trixie sobs, throws the paper box of gauze tape onto the hardwood. The curve of her stomach makes Katya’s eyes blur. “Stop it! I can’t look at you with that.”

She’s pointing at Katya’s black eye, a punch thrown by a cocky cop in a sea of tear gas, his wedding ring slitting a gash across her cheekbone. Katya doesn’t see why, it’s stopped bleeding, she’s _okay_ , but Trixie’s face is bright red, her neck is splotchy and she keeps wiping snot from her upper lip.

Trixie’s sobs are growing faster and her voice is becoming almost indistinguishable, words getting lost in Katya’s foggy ears. She’s gasping big breaths, choking on air, and Katya is afraid to touch her, afraid to make it worse. She can’t imagine she could ever make it better.

“I’m fucking- I’m- I’m fucking- _pregnant_ , this was such a fucking mistake… you’re going to fucking leave me, you’re going to die,” Trixie cries. Katya can feel the sharp pain in her stomach grow. She’s been standing in the same position ever since Trixie asked her to get her water, her entire body numb. She wants to jump out of the window, wants to hold Trixie as tight as she can until she stops shaking.

“It wasn’t a mistake,” is all Katya can say. “The baby was not a mistake.”

Trixie sobs twice in a row, cries out until her voice cracks. She squeezes the counter with her hands, Katya can see her fingernails warping and her bones white through her pink skin. Katya is holding her own hip tightly in two hands, she’s three feet away from Trixie, at the most. 

“Of course it was a fucking mistake-” Trixie turns, waves her hand again, narrowly misses Katya’s face in her wild gesturing. Katya can’t find it within herself to flinch. Her body won’t respond. “You can’t take it, I knew you couldn’t, you can’t take it seriously! Oh my god, what am I doing.”

Katya breathes in deep, finally finds it in herself to unclench her fingers and reach a hand towards her. Trixie grabs it, clenches so hard that Katya’s eyes unfocus, focus back again to Trixie’s face right up close to her own, breathing hot air frantically into her mouth.

Trixie’s shaking hands come up to Katya’s cheeks, flex open and closed, flatten palms on her cheekbones, rest her fingers against the gauze tape. Katya holds her eye contact, although she keeps blinking, her eyes are blood red and glazed over more than Katya has ever seen them.

“You have to stop, please stop, you have to stop. I can’t take it-” Trixie sobs again, digs her thumbs unthinkingly into Katya’s neck so that she coughs, the pressure building and mixing with the buildup of anxious phlegm. 

Katya nods, despite Trixie’s strong arms keeping her head in place. She nods, again and again, and Trixie nods back. Katya can feel Trixie’s hands shaking, her entire body shaking. The light overhead is hidden behind Trixie’s hair, Katya wants to hold her more than anything. Her hands are hanging limply at her sides.

“Are you sorry? Are you sorry? Please,” Trixie moans, and her fingers press hard into Katya’s freshly-bandaged cut. Katya doesn’t respond, Trixie closes her eyes and whimpers, groans loudly into the quiet of the apartment and the rustling of the leaves out the open window. “Katya!”

She screams it, releases Katya’s face, and Katya’s hand goes right to her throbbing cheekbone. Trixie’s exacerbated it, and it hurts much more than it did when it was fresh made, when she was sitting with it bleeding down her neck in a jail cell.

She stands like an idiot, keeps standing and watching, as Trixie’s bare feet unstick from the floor and as her shaking hands somehow fill a jar with water, as she gulps it down and allows half of it to fall down her chin, darken her shirt. Her nipples are rock hard.

And then she’s throwing the jar into the sink so that it breaks into a trillion pieces, and Katya is ducking, covering her face with her forearms as the glass sprays upwards. 

“Fuck, Trix!” Katya grunts, stands upright and almost steps towards her until she realizes that the glass is scattered all over the floor between them, and she reaches a hand out, in a ‘stop’ motion. “Don’t move, okay. Don’t move. Let me clean it up.”

“Don’t fucking tell me what to do, fuck!” Trixie is still screaming, her voice high and hoarse. She doesn’t move, but she looks even angrier. “You can’t say anything.”

She’s yelling so loudly that Katya shouldn’t be as surprised as she is when the door behind her is opened quickly and a big, warm hand is wrapping around her bony shoulder, pulling her backwards.

“Alright, enough!” Ginger is growling. Katya can tell that she’s chewing tobacco, can hear it in her muffled voice. And she can see that they’ve interrupted her bedtime routine, she’s in a tank and boxers and her hair is wet, slicked back. Katya feels a rush of shame, Naomi is behind her and Courtney is holding tight onto her elbow. Both of them look terrified, but Ginger just looks angry. And tired.

“Let go of me,” Katya whispers. She’s turned away from Trixie by Ginger’s actions, pushed down onto the chair she was just sitting on as Trixie tended to her wound, but she can hear her crying still. 

“Shut up. Court, you sweep that glass up,” Ginger barks. Katya can see her shuffle to do so as Naomi steps through the glass in her boots to wrap Trixie up in her long arms, brings one hand of thin fingers to push her hair back from her face, and then Ginger is blocking Katya’s view of them. “What in the hell is going on up here.”

It isn’t a question, and Ginger pulls the tape off of her cut, takes more from the bits sitting on the table, and redoes the bandage. She smells like cologne and toothpaste, and Katya closes her eyes, allows her to tape her back up.

Her shoulders are extraordinarily tense. She can still hear Trixie’s sobs behind the wall of Ginger’s body, can faintly hear Courtney and Naomi whispering to her over the woosh-es of the broom and the booms of the trash bin. 

“Kat- Katya,” Trixie whines, and Katya can feel her thighs trembling as she attempts to rise, but Ginger keeps a firm hold on her shoulders, makes sure that she doesn’t move a muscle. “Katya!”

“Shut her up,” Ginger mumbles, so that only Katya can hear. Katya tries to push her back, but her hands make no headway on Ginger’s strong shoulders. 

It’s painfully bright in the kitchen, suddenly. Ginger is shielding her from the overhead light, but the floor is reflecting it up into her eyes. Katya can hear the bedroom door open and then shut, almost too quietly to account for. But she hears it, and then Trixie’s sobs and Courtney’s whispers are muffled behind it. 

Ginger steps back, then, stalks over to flip the light off so that the only light comes from the lamp in the living room just across. Katya sighs, places her face in her hands, elbows aching against the tabletop. She can hear Ginger sit down and sigh. The tobacco has disappeared, most likely into the trash with the remains of the glass jar. 

“You really let it go far, didn’t ya?” Ginger asks. Katya sobs into her hands, shakes her head as fast as she can without it bringing on the urge to vomit. She didn’t, didn’t let it go too far, she’s just stupid. And she thinks that Ginger knows that, too.

“No.”

“Well tell it like it is, then. Your pregnant wife is in there panicking-” Ginger jerks a thumb behind her shoulder, to the bedroom door. Katya fixates on the light coming from under it. “And here you are, fresh from one of your precious fights. You jailbird. You love to get right into it with a cop, don’t you? Can’t be doing that once you’re a mother.”

Katya presses her fingers against her eyelids, scrunches up her face and tenses her body in a futile attempt to stop shaking. Ginger sighs. 

“You know what I have to say,” Ginger’s voice has dropped, to an almost-whisper. “You know what the right thing to do is. Stop pretending like you don’t. You know,” Ginger stretches, arms behind her head, and stands in her socks to dig around in the fridge. She pours some orange juice for herself and some water for Katya, as Katya waits for her to finish the thought. “You know how I felt about this from the beginning.”

Katya rolls her closed eyes back. She hopes Trixie is okay, physically mostly, because she can’t hope much for her mental state right now. And it’s her fault, and she hates herself for it.

“But,” Ginger continues. Katya opens her eyes. “But when I saw how seriously you were takin’ it, well. Well I was damn pleased, and, I have to say, a little surprised. I love you, girl, but when Bob told me you were takin’ over I didn’t have the highest hopes,” Ginger’s eyes squint as they pinpoint Katya in the semi-darkness.

“But I’ve changed my mind. You’re perfect for this place. I don’t know if you’re perfect for that woman, not with how you’ve gone and nearly offed yourself, but you are good at mentoring and leading. Parental-like. You have work to do, and lots of it.”

Katya nods, allows for one last final sob. She scrubs her hands up and down her face, almost forgetting about her bruised eye and taped cut, and gulps down the rest of her water. 

“I was damn scared, when I heard her scream at you. I knew she’d be in the right, but ain’t nobody like the two of you when you fight. It’s like the mothers of this place, throwing jars at each other? Scary. Keep yourself in line. You’re sleeping with me in the common room tonight.” Ginger reaches out a hand and Katya takes it, allows Ginger to lift her from her seat without a problem. She follows her ashamedly, numb and aching, to the empty room filled with beds for any woman that might need to stay the night. 

She doesn’t sleep until the sun is coming back up. She lies on the uncomfortable cot, under the flimsy blanket, and stares up at the ceiling as Ginger snores on, not thinking about much of anything in an attempt to forget about far too much. She tries to meditate, to regulate her breathing, to pray or calm down or connect herself to the ground below her, but none of it works. When she wakes in an empty room at ten a.m., her shoulders are throbbing and her right leg is asleep.

She limps over to the kitchen to pull a box of cereal out of the cupboard, shakes it into a bowl and splashes milk over it lazily. She curls back up in the cot, settled up against the wall, cross-legged, and eats it in complete silence. Her head is throbbing, mostly from a lack of cigarettes and coffee but also from the whirling of her mind that started up the moment she recalled the night before.

It feels uncomfortable to be in her own building, her own home, but not able to walk up the stairs to wish Trixie a good morning, to make her breakfast and rub her tummy as they lie in bed, watching the city go by out the window. The aftermath of a protest usually means an uptick in visitors, a need for restocking all the first aid, and a push for donations for bail. Katya guesses that Ginger’s taking care of all of it, that Trixie is similarly sequestered in their bedroom. She hopes that Naomi and Courtney stayed with her last night.

She wastes the extra time waiting for someone to visit her with yoga, another failed attempt at meditation that has her raging in frustration that she pushes down with the realization that she’s desperate for a smoke. She opens the door as quietly as she can, so that the murmurs a floor down grow louder, climbs down the steps gently and peers around the corner to see Naomi settled at her desk, eating a salad and nodding solemnly at something Ginger is whispering to her.

“Morning,” Katya announces. She ignores her burning need for a cigarette by digging her fingernails into her palm, gritting her teeth. Her tongue is throbbing. Naomi looks up as if she’s seen a ghost, and Ginger turns around to watch her, her face unreadable.

“Good morning,” Naomi replies. She sounds strained, looks awkward in her seat. Ginger doesn’t speak.

Katya steps forward slowly, and Ginger sighs.

“Come on, be an adult. Here-” she pulls a cigarette from her shirt pocket, holds it towards Katya and Katya walks slowly to her, takes the cigarette with three fingers and lets Ginger light it for her. She closes her eyes on the first drag, lets her lungs expand as far as they will go. 

“Where is she,” Katya says. She feels numb all over, suddenly, as if Ginger took all of the fight and trepidation out of her the moment she demanded she grow up. “I gotta see her.”

Ginger rolls her eyes.

“Not with that stick in your mouth, you don’t. She’s been snoozing on and off all morning. Stuffing her face. Seems unbothered.” 

Katya wants to scream. She wants to stop her foot on the tile floor like a kindergartener, wants to flick her precious cigarette in Ginger’s face. She takes a deep breath instead, wills her tears to climb back into her eyes. She considers fighting back, sassing at Ginger before twirling in her cloud of smoke to stalk up the stairs.

But she closes her mouth, keeps the cigarette between her lips, and begins the climb to Trixie with heavy legs.

\- - -

Trixie wakes up with her eyes glued shut with salt. Her stomach is swirling, and she places both hands on the baby immediately. She can’t feel anything immediately wrong, and once she can place the cause of the anxiety heavy in her fingers she realizes that the discomfort is not baby-related.

Courtney’s blonde curls are covering the pillow next to her, on what is usually Trixie’s side of the bed. The side Trixie is sleeping on smells of cigarettes and Katya’s shampoo, and she settles herself a little deeper into the sheets, arms crossing her belly, stuffing her face into Katya’s pillow. It feels distinctly childish.

It’s a gray morning. The window is wide open, how Naomi left it the night before, after she yanked it open at Trixie’s moan for fresh air, and the birds are singing out in the tree. Trixie feels cheated by them, by the cars driving past five floors below. The sheets around her are cool, and Naomi is snoring lightly on the armchair. Trixie had pleaded with her to not fall asleep there, on top of a pile of just-washed undergarments, but she had shushed her gently, splayed her long legs outwards and rested her head back. Trixie will give her a massage if her neck is stiff when she wakes, out of the extreme guilt that’s already bubbling in her gut.

Courtney shuffles next to her, and Trixie’s mind spews a waterfall of remembrance of the day before. Waking up groggy, calling Katya’s name to silence, knowing exactly where she had gone, waiting in the kitchen with the phone on the table in front of her, pulled off the wall, for the call from the fucking morgue, or the police office.

She had gone hour-by-hour, attempting mindful breathing as the clock ticked forward. She did not turn on the TV, she had looked at the radio but decided against it. Her feet had ached.

When the phone had rang, and Katya was grunting to her from jail, asking to be picked up, Trixie had hung up after agreeing and let out a dry sob, had slammed a fist down on the table and lugged her body to get dressed, in soft pants and a sweater, to drive the truck to the jail to fetch Katya and whoever else needed a ride.

She had held it together, through the secretary and guards staring her and her perpetual hand on her stomach down, ogling curiously and squinting when she gripped Katya’s shoulders tight enough to make her wince, had shook her head slowly at the oozing cut on her cheekbone. She had ignored it, even through the hardly-mumbled slur of a red-faced cop. She’s certain he hated her pregnant ass more than he ever would had she not been.

She had held it together, and she had been proud. She’s always wanted to be the kind of woman that could lay down the law when necessary and then allow others to be themselves at the same time. She’s prided herself on it, through pushing Katya to take her job and encouraging her to learn and grow. She’s prided herself on it through her pregnancy so far, her baby daughter a tiny creature living inside of her, so alive that Trixie can hardly stand it, sometimes. 

And she’s worked hard at herself to remain calm, knowing that motherhood will be exhausting and stressful and neverending. She’s centered herself, she was so sure of it, positive that nothing could break her past the absolute worst. And she had been so proud, the past few weeks, feeling confident and so immensely happy. Physically uncomfortable, sure, but happier than she’s ever been.

But last night all of it crumbled dramatically, and Trixie is just pleased that someone stopped the both of them before it could get any worse. She can hardly remember it, other than the soul-splitting feeling of watching Katya stare at her in fear as she twisted herself up and wrung herself out, over and over. She remembers glass flying into her face, and then hands gently guiding her to the bedroom.

She vividly remembers Courtney kneeling on the bed next to her, not touching but breathing, counting to four on an inhale and a matching exhale for Trixie to mimic, until her vision was clear again and the chaos in her head was replaced with an uncomfortable buzzing.

She remembers asking for Katya, and the quiet ways Courtney and Naomi had shushed her after she did so.

And what she wants now, more than anything, is to see Katya’s face and make sure she’s okay. She can feel deep inside of herself that the baby is okay, despite her crisis. But what she doesn’t know and can’t know is if Katya is okay. She has flashes similar to the ones she was having the day before of Katya’s body crumpled in the street, but this time they are of Katya staggering out of a bar, right as the sun comes up, covering her eyes and stuffing bags of cocaine into her pockets. Or worse, Katya in a back alley, completely alone, shaking and somewhere in the back of her mind wishing Trixie could be there.

She goes over the images again and again, compulsively, articulating to herself the exact ways Katya’s body could be twisted in pain, how her head would ache in the way that makes her cry a little, until Courtney wakes up and turns, looks Trixie up and down.

“How are you feeling, dear?” Trixie takes a shaky breath, sniffles. Her eyes are dry enough to irritate her. Courtney pouts, reaches beneath the sheets for Trixie’s hand, which she takes in hers. “You want breakfast?”

Trixie is starving, so she allows Courtney opening the door to the kitchen and starting toast. She sits at the table where it looks as if nothing’s happened. Katya’s first cigarette of the night that she’d lit the instant she arrived home is alone in the ashtray, and it’s stained with old blood. Trixie had stared at her until she had put it out guiltily. 

She didn’t want to have to do any of it, everything that came with pregnancy without her knowing. She hadn’t wanted to beg Katya to try to quit smoking, had certainly not wanted Katya to acquiesce because of how pathetic she was sure she was being. She hadn’t wanted to ask Katya to keep away from protests, but also couldn’t imagine raising a daughter alone. _Lesbian mothers, lesbian wives, lesbian mothers, lesbian wives_ , her brain chants unforgivingly. She wishes it would stop.

Eventually, after breakfast and awkward silences long enough to fill the ocean four times over, Naomi wakes up and pulls Courtney downstairs, stating the importance of checking on the others. Her eyes had flicked to Trixie, but Trixie couldn’t bother looking back. She had sat at the table until they left, until the baby was begging her to go pee, and then she was staring at her own face in the bathroom mirror.

Katya was right, all the many times she’s waxed poetic about Trixie being beautiful in pregnancy. Her entire body feels like it has a holy purpose, and she feels like her own Christian mother even thinking it. But her every pore, every last hair, is glowing, almost cruel to be shining the way they are after the night before. Her chest is red, and she presses her hand against it to see the shape of her palm flash white, disappear before she can even be certain it was there.

Her freckles are blossoming with the time she’s spent in the living room with the windows wide open, the sun on her face, or in the park with ice cream and Katya guiding her around amusedly, her tan skin soaking up every last inch of sun it possibly could.

The childish feeling hasn’t left, and the only thing that pulls her out of it is her pregnant, adult body. She wishes for a moment, that she had woken up with her face on Katya’s squishy stomach, warm and brown with sunshine, that nothing had ever happened and that Katya would lather up a washcloth and scrub her body down in the bathtub. She wants an early, warm day with the windows open, and Katya’s kind fingers all over her. Katya’s glasses are resting on the edge of the sink. She slips them on just to feel the wall and mirror in front of her separate from reality, blur so that her eyes water. She looks like a mother, looks infinitely older with them on. Katya looks younger with them off.

It’s a blessing that they fought now rather than later. She slips the glasses down her nose, sets them gently where they were. Katya will be up to retrieve them, soon. She can feel it. She isn’t really as disconnected as she thought.

If Katya was missing, if she had gone out to cause trouble for herself or called Alaska to cause trouble for the both of them, Trixie would know by now. She breathes, holds her breath as Katya’s taught her, lifts her chest, releases the breath. The tiny knock on the door at the top of the stairs pulls her out of it, and she breaks contact with her own eyes in the mirror.

She walks into the dining room slowly, takes the time to get a glass of water on her way to the door. As she turns the knob, she decides to ignore the lit cigarette she knows is on the other side, and the moment she sees Katya’s tan skin, she wraps her tightly in her arms, touches her warm back with her sweaty fingers.

She can feel Katya’s body lifting and releasing a deep sigh, but the blood is pounding in her ears and she cannot hear it. Katya’s hands come to her spine, dig into the muscles of her back where she knows Trixie aches. 

“I didn’t want to cut you up,” Trixie chokes out. Katya’s arms wrap around her tighter, her stomach rounds over Trixie’s belly. Trixie can feel the baby move between them, she knows that she’s been missing her mother. Trixie’s knees buckle.

“I know you didn’t, I know,” Katya says. She hoists Trixie up by her waist ever so gently, guides her over to the table so that she can leave her cigarette behind on the way to the couch. Every time Katya smokes in a fury of anxiety and distress, Trixie’s heart is on the fast-track back to college, when Katya was much less concerned with those around her, much more free. Trixie hates it, a little, to be reminded of how much easier it was. But she would much rather be here, with Katya lowering her onto the couch gingerly.

Katya kisses her with dry lips, wipes the tears off of her hot cheeks with her dry, cracking thumbs. Trixie stares up into her eyes, lifts shaking fingers to squish her cheeks.

“I don’t want to fight again. I just want you to take it slow. I can’t stop you from doing your job. I know that, Katya. I know I can’t, and I don’t want to. I just don’t want you hurt anymore.” Trixie allows Katya sitting on her thighs, both of her hands open-palmed on Trixie’s round belly. She’s less free to breathe in this position, but Katya’s warm hands on her stomach, waiting for the baby to move in response to her, is far more important. She can feel warmth rising up her back.

“I know. Trixie,” Katya cuts herself off to kiss Trixie again. Trixie licks her lips to cut the dryness, grips at the sharp collarbone that ends on Katya’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”

Trixie has never seen her so beaten down. Despite her perch on Trixie, her straight back and her long hair falling down to Trixie’s thighs, her eyes are drooping, her dark circles are deep and rapidly turning into a black eye on the side she was punched. Her mouth is twisted in disgust, and Trixie whimpers at the sight of her, holds back her sudden tears.

“It’s okay,” she says, and Katya’s eyes lift from Trixie’s belly to her face, where she scans her lips, her cheeks, rests on her eyes. Her shoulders drop further.

“It’s not, and I know it. And I’m going to do better. I’m going to be a good mother, I’ll try not to fuck up anymore. I could have died, or it could have been worse, and I’m so sorry.”

Trixie reaches for her cheeks again. Both of them have gained weight in Trixie’s pregnancy, with Katya’s insistence on regular meals with as much healthy food they could afford. Katya’s cheeks are less bone and more soft, near wrinkles, and Trixie’s developed a habit of kissing them, of tapping at her pores with her fingertips.

“You’re already a wonderful mother.”

Katya sighs again, drapes her entire body just gently across Trixie. Her strong core keeps her from collapsing heavily on the baby, and her familiar smell envelops Trixie entirely.

\- - -

Trixie doesn’t expect the baby to be born on a rainy day, but when the day does come and the sky is falling around them, Katya is unsurprised. It feels fitting, with all of the roadblocks that have brought the both of them here, that the baby would come screaming into a rainstorm, that Trixie would be borderline neurotic about the atmosphere of the bedroom, about the cloudy sky and how the baby would despise it, about Katya’s inevitable moodiness whenever there is any sort of cloud cover.

So Katya is at her side, blowing cool air onto her cheeks and gently wiping across her forehead with a wet cloth, encouraging her and promising, swearing on everything she holds hear, that the thunderstorm couldn’t possibly be sending her straight to sadness, that she shouldn’t worry about Katya, that she should breathe and listen to Courtney and the midwife.

Katya’s gained infinite experience in high-stress situations. Katya’s slapped cops, has run blindly through tear gas and has narrowly missed bullets aimed at crowds, has been face to face with death and destruction, has identified her own friends at the morgue, and has pushed forward through the months of Trixie’s pregnancy. 

She isn’t surprised that she’s filled with fear, despite her intimate knowledge of it. She settles into the feeling, breathes deeply, touches Trixie’s hot skin to ground herself.

She’s never felt fear at the magnitude of holding her own daughter for the first time, the baby Trixie insisted on leaving unnamed until she could see her tiny face. She’s sleeping, her weight is like a microwaved hot pad in Katya’s arms. Her little eyes are squeezed shut, and Katya sobs before she can even feel the emotion bubbling up in her throat. 

Trixie’s eyelids droop as she nears sleep, and Katya stands stock still holding the baby as everything is cleaned up around her.

The window is still filled with melted candles, and the rain patters tirelessly against the glass. Katya stares out at the tree beyond, the dark, deep green of the leaves that rustle in the water and wind. She fills her stomach with breath from the lowest point up, slowly feels her torso expanding to hold her daughter over and over again. She matches Trixie’s breathing in her sleep, gently runs a finger across tiny knuckles. 

Her bare feet feel settled, her arches rising to meet the ceiling. Her neck is sore from worry, and her elbows are filled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you! <3


End file.
